


like constellations

by livtontea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reunions, Temporary Character Death, The Monkey Serum, Time Travel, You know exactly what I'm talking about, let five say fuck, no beta we die like ben, really a oneshot but split up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: If he were a poet, he would say something about how he has a bullet wound in his chest and a hole in his heart. He'd describe the sharp aching pain of death and loss, weave words together to explain his current state of being. He would make an analogy, a reference to heartbreak or loss of love or any and all of the sad romantic things usually talked about in sad romantic poems.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This should really be one chapter but I broke it up into multiple for ~dramatic effect~ and also because I still haven't finished writing it.
> 
> People have written this before for sure, Five going back and saving Dave because he's a sap who loves his brother, but I'm writing it anyway because Dave and Klaus deserve a happy ending.
> 
> I think the title is from Constellations by the Oh Hellos. Probably. I think.

Dave has a bullet wound in his chest.

If he were a poet, he would say something about how he has a bullet wound in his chest and a hole in his heart. He'd describe the sharp aching pain of death and loss, weave words together to explain his current state of being. He would make an analogy, a reference to heartbreak or loss of love or any and all of the sad romantic things usually talked about in sad romantic poems.

Dave isn't a poet.

He's a soldier with a buzzing in his head and a bullet wound in his chest. He's a soldier with blood staining his ripped shirt and a lack of presence. He's a soldier who's watching himself die.

Literally. That's what's happening right now.

Dave's thoughts move slowly, like jelly. He thinks just seconds ago he was on the ground, gasping in pain. Now he's standing, watching somebody plead with his shaking body, numb.

Klaus. Klaus is crying over Dave.

Isn't he supposed to be dead?

Maybe he already is. He's watching the scene before him play out from an outsider's perspective, after all. But he doesn't feel dead, not yet.

Klaus is saying something about "I love you"s and "please"s, but Dave can't make out the exact words. The body on the ground, which is him but also not, because he's right there over it, keeps choking on blood. Dying.

Dave tries to put a hand on the crying man's shoulder. He's good at that, comforting people. Klaus specifically, but he has a knack of offering consolation at the right times in the right ways. His hand goes through.

Dave shivers. It isn't the most pleasant sensation. His hand feels like it’s been dunked into a bucket of ice water, except Klaus is the hand, and Dave’s the bucket.

“Weird,” he mutters to nobody in particular. Himself, probably.

Somebody runs up to Klaus. Dave almost reaches out again to help the person drag him up, but stops himself just before Klaus is lifted off the ground. He’s pulled away from Dave’s body kicking and screaming. Or crying? Kicking, screaming, and crying. All three at once.

Dave doesn’t follow. There really isn’t any point, with himself dead. He is dead now, isn’t he? He stands over the still body on the ground, examining his own features. He’s not wearing his dog tags, he notes. Klaus must have them.

Dave’s head feels jumbled.

He crouches down looking at the rip in his skin with calm curiosity. That’s a little frightening, but maybe it’s just what being dead is like. Or maybe it’s the shock of dying in a gory and brutal fashion.

The wound is tiny on his back. Much smaller than exit wounds should be. He looks like he was shot from behind, by somebody on his side.

Dave doesn’t have time to think that over because suddenly, with everybody cleared away from his body, a boy runs up to it. Scampers. That would describe his movement well.

The boy scampers up to Dave’s dead body, which makes Dave ask himself, what is a child no older than fourteen doing on a battlefield? The boy, he looks around, as if making sure nobody’s watching. Dave is.

He takes hold of Dave’s body and fumbles around in the pocket of his uniform blazer for what reveals itself to be a syringe filled with clear liquid. He poises it over Dave’s chest, but then shakes his head.

“No, not here,” he mutters to himself. Dave wants to ask what he means, but the boy keeps talking. “Closer to the briefcase would be better,” he says. “Less space for error.”

The boy talks like he’s much older than he seems. An old soul, Dave’s grandma might’ve said.

Then the boy, with his lanky limbs and childlike stance, puts the syringe back into his pocket and bends down, grabbing Dave’s body by his armpits. He huffs, maybe from annoyance, or maybe from the weight of a grown man in his arms, and disappears.

Disappears. No, that’s not what happens. He blinks out, the air around him condensing and glowing blue for one short second. Dave blinks too.

He’s in a different spot now, surrounded by trees and still silence. The only thing breaking it is the boy.

“You’re gonna owe me so much fucking coffee,” he mumbles. “I swear to god.”

Dave frowns.

The boy pulls the syringe back out, and without hesitating, stabs it into Dave’s chest.

Suddenly there’s a shift in perspective.

Dave is on the ground, gasping for air, blood running down his chest. A boy, no older than fourteen, is standing above him, biting his lip. The pain is sharp, piercing, deep.

Dave thinks he might be crying.

“Oh good, it worked.”

That’s the last thing Dave hears before he finds the darkness at the edges of his vision consuming him.


	2. Chapter 2

He blinks.

Dave can feel a dull throbbing in his chest. His head feels like it’s splitting apart. He groans.

“You’re awake,” a calm voice says from above him. Dave squints up at the source.

A young boy, the same one who took his body into the woods and pierced his bloody chest with a syringe. He’s cleaner now, the uniform he’s wearing crisp and spotless, his hair parted to the side in one smooth wave.

“I was worrying you’d never wake up.”

“Where am I?” Dave croaks through his parched throat.

“You’re in the infirmary,” the boy says like it should be obvious. “And that’s where you’ll be staying for the near future.”

Dave nods. “Who are you?”

“Five.”

It takes Dave a moment to realize that he’s talking about a name and not a number.

“You’re Five? That Five?”

Five frowns. He tilts his head to the side a bit, like he’s trying to get a better view on the situation. “Which Five?”

“Klaus talked about a Five. His brother.”

“Oh. I didn’t know he talked about me.” Five’s voice trails off. He clears his throat. “Yes. I am that Five.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Five rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. Heel, toe. He looks like there’s something important that needs to be said, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Soon enough Dave can’t take the tense silence anymore.

“Can I see him?”

“Who?”

“Klaus. I’d like to see him.”

Five wrinkles his nose, inhaling. “You can’t.”

Dave blinks. Eyelids up, eyelids down. “What do you mean, I can’t?”

“He…” Five isn’t meeting Dave’s eyes. He’s looking off to the side, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “He doesn’t know you’re here. To him, you’re still dead.”

It feels like the little air in Dave’s lungs is knocked out. “Still dead? Why didn’t you tell him?”

“It’s a delicate situation,” Five snaps defensively. “If I tell him, and then you still die, then… Then…”

“I can still die.”

Five shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a possibility. The way I brought you back, it’s… Not a very well-tested method. You’re lucky you’re not experiencing any of the side effects it had on Luther. Took me forever to alter the formula for that.”

“Luther?”

“You’ve probably heard of him, if you’ve heard of me.”

He’s right, Dave has heard of Luther.

Five sighs. “Look, I’m sorry.” It looks like it pains him to say that. “But you can’t leave this room until I’m positive you’re not going to drop dead at any moment.”

Dave takes a deep breath. It aches, the expansion of his lungs sending a dim throbbing through his chest.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” repeats Five.

“I know.”

Over the next few days, Dave learns that Five is actually fifty-eight and only looks thirteen. He learns that the year is twenty-nineteen and that he can’t go back to the time he came from. Not a great loss, he thinks. There wasn’t much keeping him there anyway.

There’s a bullet wound in his chest. It’s healed. Pink scar tissue slightly raised above the other skin.

Dave’s hand often raises to rub at it absentmindedly. His fingers trace it over and over again, marveling at how fast it’s healed. Five said he couldn’t remove the scar, but it’s not like Dave’s complaining. Better to be left alive with a scar than dead without one.

It feels like it takes a long while for Dave to be able to stand up, but in reality, it’s only two days. That’s another side effect of resurrection, if that’s what you could call it. Dave’s sense of the passing of time is extremely screwed up now.

Three days into his impromptu hospitalization, Five walks into the room.

“Congratulations. You’re alive.”

“Really?” Dave looks up from where he was reading a book. It’s not one he’s familiar with, but the plot is interesting enough. “So I can go?”

Five shrugs. “Pretty much. You definitely won’t drop dead out of nowhere now, and Klaus is probably gonna be happy to see you. Yeah, you can go.”

Dave sets the book aside, not before glancing at the page number. He stands up.

“Could you take me to him?”

Five looks something like a Peter Pan for a moment, ready to hold Dave’s hand and pull him into Neverland.

“Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dave is standing in front of what Five says is Klaus’s door. The boy, or man, himself is standing next to Dave, looking at him curiously and apathetically at once.

“Are you gonna knock?”

Dave bites his lip. That was the plan, wasn’t it?

Five nudges Dave’s arm. Like a cat, is what comes to mind.

“You know he’s really missed you, right? There’s no way you could fuck this up,” Five says like he’s read Dave’s mind.

He’s right, probably. Dave has missed Klaus so much that even if all he gets is a glimpse of his face and a door slammed, he’ll be grateful. But…

Five rolls his eyes.

A quick knock sounds on the door. Five’s fist is still above the wood when Dave looks to him with a frown. Five smirks, and Dave’s anxiety grows. He’s panicking. Definitely.

Before Dave can say anything, footsteps are nearing the door from the inside, and Five is gone. That bastard. The door swings open. Dave steps out of the way, even though it opens inwards.

“Diego, I told you, I’m _fine_-”

Klaus freezes.

“...Dave?”

He can’t find words, so he nods. His ribcage feels tight around his lungs.

“Dave.”

“It’s me.” He tries to force something, anything, out of his throat.

“Did I… Did I do it?” Klaus laughs, unbelieving and unhinged, a hand going up and sticking itself in his hair, moving it up away from his face. “Oh my god! Ben, you can see him, right? I conjured Dave? I’m not hallucinating?”

“You’re not,” confirms a voice Dave’s never heard before. It’s coming from a guy hovering behind Klaus, dressed in a black hoodie and a leather jacket of the same color.

“You aren’t,” Dave adds. And then, “You didn’t conjure me.”

“What-”

Klaus throws a glance at the man behind him. “You can see Ben, right?”

That’s his name. It makes sense. Klaus has often talked about the brother who followed him around, and later when he told Dave about his powers how he was a ghost. “I can.”

“So… You’re dead.”

Dave shakes his head. “I’m not.” It comes out much softer than he meant to say it. “I’m not.”

“Then what are you?”

In a moment of impulsivity, Dave reaches out and grabs Klaus’s hands, pressing one of them against his heart. “Alive.”

Klaus jerks as Dave’s hand comes in contact with his skin. His fingers slowly press into Dave’s chest, harder and harder until Dave is sure Klaus can feel his heartbeat. Klaus’s hands are cold.

“You’re alive,” Klaus whispers, tears already gathering in his eyes. “But- When- How?”

Dave smiles. He can feel the dampness making its way down his cheeks. “Five.”

“Five? He, he brought you back?”

Dave nods. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why?” Klaus is starting to sound muffled now, his silent crying growing louder. “Why are you-? Why are you sorry?”

“For leaving you. I’m sorry I left you alone.”

Klaus lets out a wail, his hand breaking free of Dave’s and wrapping around his shoulders. He shoves his face into Dave’s chest, next to where his hand is gripping his shirt over his heart.

“I’m just gonna go… Not be here.” Ben slips past the two, who are still standing in the doorway crying. Ben doesn’t get an answer, but Dave thinks he probably doesn’t have much of a problem with that.

Klaus is still clinging to Dave’s shirt sobbing. Dave thinks, fuck it, and buries his face in his hair. They’re both crying, crying, crying, and honestly? Dave is okay with that.

“Dave,” Klaus says, over and over. “Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave.”

“Klaus,” answers Dave. “Klaus, Klaus, Klaus.”

“I love you.”

“Me too,” Dave’s voice comes out wet. “I love you, Klaus.”

Klaus laughs, finally ripping himself away from Dave. His hand doesn’t leave Dave’s shoulder, but the other one goes up to wipe some of the tears from his eyes. “You’re here.”

“I am.”

“I’m so fucking happy, Dave.”

“I know,” Dave says. And then once again, “Me too.”

Klaus pulls Dave’s head down and kisses him, long and hard, but also soft and sweet at the same time. Dave kisses back without hesitation.

“Don’t leave again,” Klaus says once they break apart. “Don’t you dare leave again, or I’ll talk to God and make Her give you back myself.”

Dave laughs.

“I’ll do it.”

“I know.” He’d do the same thing for Klaus in a heartbeat.

“Kiss me again,” Klaus says, and Dave does. He's never letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> Was this extremely self-indulgent? Yes, yes it was, next question.
> 
> My tumblr is [@seven-misfits,](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/) do with that what you will.
> 
> Drop a line! I'd love to know what you think.


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